The spokesman of the General Staff of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) has denied that the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) has stopped fighting in Syria.
The spokesman confirmed the arrival of massive support for ISIS from Iraq, adding that the terrorist organization was about to collapse in Syria before Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, rushed to save it by fabricating the events in Mosul and the withdrawal of the Iraqi army from there.
The spokesman of the General Staff of the Eastern Front, Omar Abu Laila, told the Italian (AKI) news agency that "this is not accurate, the fight with ISIS has not stopped until this moment all over the eastern countryside of Deir El-Zor, which has witnessed clashes, especially in the area near to Jdaidat Egedat, and Basra and its surrounding villages, which ISIS is trying desperately to control. They have tried dozens of times and did not succeed because the rebels confronted them," he said.
Some news reports suggested that the Syrian wing of the Islamic State has suspended the fight in Syria to bring weapons seized from Iraq, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that ISIS might have held a truce with the battalions of the opposition in north-eastern Syria after the invasion of Mosul.
When asked whether ISIS has showed any signs of moving into Iraq or changing its fortifications in north-eastern Syria, Abu Laila said that ISIS "does not need to move to Iraq but it needs to import support from its primary center in Iraq. The battles taking place today in the East indicate that they want to connect Deir El-Zor with Mosul and Iraqi territory, which is their main base, so they want to expand their geographical area by controlling the province of Deir El-Zor, which is the food basket in Syria and which contains at the same time all the oil and gas."
Translated and edited by The Syrian Observer
......
